Residents of the Syrian city of Raqqa who have fled to Lebanon tell of life back home in Isis’s capital
It was once a riverside city of more than 200,000 people, the sixth largest in Syria with a rich heritage influenced by the dominant cultures of the various ages – Greek, Roman, Byzantine and Islamic.
But Raqqa, the newfound “capital” of Islamic State, has become a
citadel of hunger, monotony and overwhelming oppression, where women
must cover up completely, water and electricity supplies are fitful and
beheadings are the standard form of punishment.
In a settlement of 700 people displaced from Raqqa and now eking out a miserable existence in the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, former townsfolk paint a picture of a city bereft of vitality where the group’s brutal dominion is on full display.
“The situation in Raqqa is worse than anything,” said a man who
arrived two months ago and asked for his ident
He added: “How did it change? People’s livelihood was destroyed, not
changed. You can’t even smoke, women have to cover everything except
their eyes, that’s not something we are used to.”
The man said services in his area had long been cut off, with no
electricity and little running water, driving the costs of water
supplies higher.
But the hardest thing to stomach appeared to be the militants’
signature style of killing. “Is there anything worse than beheadings?
They put up the heads on electric poles and in parks. I saw it,” he
said.
And the group had besmirched the honour of local families, often
forcibly taking women from the community to marry them to fighters, most
of whom were foreigners, he said, from as far away as Chechnya, Sudan,
Tunisia and Libya. “God is our refuge,” he muttered silently as he
recounted the abuse.
Recent arrivals to the Lebanese settlement said the militant group
had allowed buses to take refugees in and out of Raqqa, so long as they
took little with them save their clothes and bedspreads – and had male
guardians.
“I just didn’t go to get anything because I couldn’t leave the
house,” said a woman who had spent two months in Raqqa visiting her
family. “I couldn’t even go out to find out much. The door was closed,”
she added, when asked about details of life in the caliphate’s capital.
Nearby in the camp, refugees struggled to build a larger tent,
planting its wooden pillars in the mud. A nearby water well appeared
damaged and dirty, but one man said they sometimes had to drink out of
it in the summer months when water was scarce in Lebanon. Children
helped chop the wood nearby.
In fact, children and teenagers do a lot of the work in the
settlement. During harvest seasons, boys and girls work on the farms.
The landlord who owns the land where they live does not charge rent, but
instead takes a $1.30 cut out of each worker’s daily pay, leaving them
with about $2.
There are about 300 children and teenagers in the camp, 70 of whom go to nearby schools run by a local NGO.
Winter was especially hard for these refugees. Recent winter storms
caused the tents to collapse, and the Syrians say they do not have
enough diesel to power the small heaters provided by the UN.
Instead, they have to buy costly firewood to stay warm. They also say
the food provided by aid agencies is not enough. “What are we going to
do?” asked another Syrian man who left Raqqa before the militants
arrived. “Everything is tough for us,” he said. “What I just want is to
go home.”
